1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus provided with a movable cartridge casing having a cartridge receiving chamber and capable of being moved to the outside of the body structure of the apparatus to facilitate loading a film cartridge into and removing the film cartridge from the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A film strip contained in an unused conventional film cartridge has a leading end section, i.e., a film leader, extending outside the shell of the film cartridge. A camera that uses this type of a film cartridge requires a rather troublesome film loading operation to open the back door of the camera, to load the film cartridge into the cartridge chamber and to bring the film leader into engagement with a take-up reel.
A camera designed to facilitate the film loading operation proposed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,841,319 uses a drop-in film cartridge containing a film strip having a film leader not extending outside the shell of the film cartridge. This known camera rotates the film spool of the drop-in film cartridge automatically in a film feed direction to feed the film strip after the drop-in film cartridge has been dropped into the cartridge chamber of a cartridge casing and the cartridge casing has been pushed back into the camera body. The aforesaid camera that uses the drop-in film cartridge is provided with a movable cartridge casing capable of being moved outside the camera body to facilitate operations for loading a drop-in film cartridge into and unloading the same from the camera.
Incidentally, it is desirable, for positioning the film strip in a high accuracy in the camera body, to feed the film strip from the film cartridge with the spool of the film cartridge supported at its opposite ends to position the spool accurately. In view of such a purpose, it is desirable that the camera is provided with a drive shaft and a support shaft disposed so as to engage the opposite ends, respectively, of the spool of the film cartridge to support the spool in place when the cartridge casing containing a film cartridge is set at a film feeding position, i.e., a position within the camera body, after the film cartridge has been loaded into the camera by moving the cartridge casing to a cartridge receiving position, i.e., a position outside the camera body, inserting the film cartridge into the cartridge casing and returning the cartridge casing to the film feeding position.
In such a camera in which the spool is supported at its opposite ends with the drive shaft and the support shaft while the spool is driven for rotation by the drive shaft, the cartridge casing must be moved away from either the drive shaft or the support shaft, or at least either the drive shaft or the support shaft must be retracted from the operating position to avoid interference between the spool and either the drive shaft or the support shaft and, at the meantime, the spool must securely be supported at its opposite ends by the drive shaft and the support shaft during a film feeding operation.
A spool driving mechanism proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 1-319737 includes a spool driving fork disposed in a cartridge casing, spool driving mechanisms proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. Hei 4-80734 and Hei 4-80735 include a spool driving fork which is moved away from a cartridge casing when the cartridge casing is moved.
In these previously proposed spool driving mechanisms, it is difficult to position the spool driving fork in a high accuracy relative to the spool because the fork is moved relative to the camera body. Furthermore, there is the possibility that an interlocking mechanism for interlocking a fork driving gear for driving the spool driving fork is unable to function smoothly to interlock the fork driving gear and the film feed mechanism and to disconnect the fork driving gear from the film feed mechanism.